In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Devil upright means: Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil. Reversed: Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.
The picture
“The design is an accommodation, mean or harmony, between several motives mentioned in the first part. The Horned Goat of Mendes, with wings like those of a bat, is standing on an altar. At the pit of the stomach there is the sign of Mercury. The right hand is upraised and extended, being the reverse of that benediction which is given by the Hierophant in the fifth card. In the left hand there is a great flaming torch, inverted towards the earth. A reversed pentagram is on the forehead. There is a ring in front of the altar, from which two chains are carried to the necks of two figures, male and female. These are analogous with those of the fifth card, as if Adam and Eve after the Fall. Hereof is the chain and fatality of the material life. The figures are tailed, to signify the animal nature, but there is human intelligence in the faces, and he who is exalted above them is not to be their master for ever. Even now, he is also a bondsman, sustained by the evil that is in him and blind to the liberty of service. With more than his usual derision for the arts which he pretended to respect and interpret as a master therein, Éliphas Lévi affirms that the Baphometic figure is occult science and magic. Another commentator says that in the Divine world it signifies predestination, but there is no correspondence in that world with the things which below are of the brute. What it does signify is the Dweller on the Threshold without the Mystical Garden when those are driven forth therefrom who have eaten the forbidden fruit.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910
Upright
Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil.
Reversed
Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.
In one line
Force and fatality, and chains loose enough to lift off. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)
Where it sits in the deck
The Devil is card XV of the 22 Major Arcana, the trumps. Before it comes Temperance; after it, The Tower.
In Esbat
Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Devil can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.
Sources
Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.
Last updated October 25, 2026.
Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play
A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.
Temperance: tarot card meaning: Temperance tarot card meaning, upright and reversed, in A. E. Waite's own words (1910), with the original 1910 picture.
The Tower: tarot card meaning: The Tower tarot card meaning, upright and reversed, in A. E. Waite's own words (1910), with the original 1910 picture.
Tarot card meanings: all 78 cards: All 78 tarot card meanings, upright and reversed, in A. E. Waite's own words (1910), with Pamela Colman Smith's original pictures.